Star goalies don't always win the Cup — a good one will do
Ilya Samsonov can win the Stanley Cup. And no, I haven't lost my mind.
It's not so much about Samsonov winning in goal for the Toronto Maple Leafs. It's just that hockey has seen a run of rather ordinary netminders coming away as unlikely champions in recent seasons.
Adin Hill, picked up for a fourth-round draft pick, won last year with the Vegas Golden Knights. Darcy Kuemper won the year before in Colorado.
Among those not named
Andrei Vasilevskiy — and yes, he already ranks as an all-time great — none of Jordan Binnington, Braden Holtby, Matt Murray, Corey Crawford or Antti Niemi do. And all have all been in goal for Cup winners, Murray and Crawford for more than one.
The days of Patrick Roy and Martin Brodeur trading Stanley Cups with Ed Belfour and Dominik Hasek sneaking between them are seemingly gone. In fact, almost every championship goalie from the mid 1950s to the turn of the century wound up in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Now, it's a new year, a new team, maybe a new goaltender who finds his way come May and June. It might be Jake Oettinger in Dallas. It might be Frederik Andersen in Carolina. It might be Stuart Skinner in Edmonton or Sergei Bobrovsky in Florida or the combination of Jeremy Swayman and Linus Ullmark in Boston.
It might even be Connor Hellebuyck the likely Vezina Trophy winner in Winnipeg or previous Vezina winner Igor Shesterkin in New York.
Odds are, it will be a surprise. Might even be Joseph Woll.
It's entirely possible that Auston Matthews will score 70 goals and Connor Mcdavid and Nikita Kucherov will reach 100 assists — two magnificent marks — and none of the three will win the Hart Trophy as most valuable player in the NHL. Nathan Mackinnon has been that terrific in Colorado.
Entering Sunday's NHL action, Matthews had 69 goals, while Mcdavid sat at 99 assists, with Kucherov one behind at 98.
And if you're an NHL all-star team voter, and you have to vote for centres, in what order are you placing the Three Ms, Mackinnon, Mcdavid and Matthews?
The GMS I've polled believe young Quinn Hughes is the runaway winner of the Norris Trophy as best defenceman. And in some years, just not this one, he'd be an MVP candidate.
Bobby Orr is the youngest player ever to win the Norris. He was 19. Then, just to be certain, he won when he was 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 and 26.
Sidney Crosby and Wayne Gretzky were 19 when they won their first Hart Trophies. Orr waited till the grand old age of 21 before running off three Harts in succession.
The only other defenceman to take home the Hart in the past 85 years was Chris Pronger in 2000. Before that, Eddie Shore, of oldtime hockey fame, won the Hart four times in the 1930s.
When Phil Esposito scored 76 goals for the Boston Bruins, he also had 76 assists. When Gretzky scored 92 for Edmonton, he added 120 assists. When Mario Lemieux scored 85 in Pittsburgh, he had 114 assists. Even Bernie Nicholls, a one-time 70-goal scorer had 80 assists in his biggest year in Los Angeles.
Matthews, a pure original at centre, has just 38 assists, and that could hurt his MVP case.
In Brett Hull's greatest statistical season, the winger scored 86 times with just 45 assists. Those are closer to Matthews numbers, but Matthews is an exceptional defensive player and Hull was rather uninterested defensively.
My pre-season Stanley Cup pick was the New York Rangers over the Edmonton Oilers. It wouldn't necessarily be my pick now, but it's not terrible.
I like the rather complete Carolina Hurricanes to come out of the East. They're first in the NHL in penalty killing and second in power play. Penalty killing is more important in the playoffs than power play.
Toronto Blue Jays fans are historically patient with managers. They learned to love John Gibbons and appreciate Cito Gaston and in between tolerated a long list of forgettable bosses. Which makes the opening day booing of John Schneider, in pre-game introduction and when he went to the mound to take out Jose Berrios, something worth monitoring